


Precious Things

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 14:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4609416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Friday night, and Doyle just wants to go home. With Bodie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Precious Things

"What you got on this weekend, then?" Doyle asked, leaning comfortably against the wall of the armoury, hips forward, arms crossed, tracking Bodie as he wandered from table to table picking up this and that. He stopped and stared at an ancient-looking handgun laid out on green felt, metal dulled and tarnished. Dug up from someone's cellar, Doyle presumed, or maybe even the river, and sent to Alf for disposal. Bodie reached out to touch the blackened stock with something like reverence.

"That's a Purdey," he said, "Where the hell did he get that?"

"Isn't she the one in leather?" If Alf would get a move on they could get out of here and start enjoying themselves. He had steak in the fridge, enough beer to float a ship, clean sheets on the bed - and he’d finally worked up the guts again to ask Bodie over. Three times before he’d got this far and bottled out - not this time. And the sooner he knew what Bodie had on, the sooner he could subvert it.

Bodie glanced at him, frowning. "Eh?" He turned back to the gun, moving to pick it up, two hands, as if it was some precious thing. "Do you have any idea what these are worth? Custom-made..."

"That's right son - and I'll thank you to keep your hands off that!"

Bodie jumped - he actually _jumped_ Doyle thought, incredulous, and then even more bizarrely he did what he was told and took his hands away. Doyle pushed away from the wall, took a step closer. What the hell…?

"Is this what I think it is?" Bodie asked, something like awe in his voice.

"Certainly is." Alf ambled over, in that old-man way he had, as nondescript as his brown dustcoat until he opened his mouth - or in the old days, so Doyle'd heard, opened fire. He'd never missed, Alf, that's what they said. If he wanted something dead, it was dead - perfectly, cleanly dead. "Needs a bit of tender loving care to bring her back to scratch, but..."

"But that's a Purdey." Bodie shook his head slowly from side to side. 

“One of it’s kind.” Alf held out Doyle’s cleaner, but apparently less precious gun. “And if you drop that again you can fix the sight yourself. You boys - no respect for a decent bit of hardware…” He gestured to the lump of metal that was keeping Bodie so enthralled. “I wouldn’t let you near something like that.”

“What is it?” Doyle slid his Browning into its holster, moved to stand against Bodie at the table. Alf moved forward too, hovering protectively above the… “What’s a Purdey when it’s at home?”

“Best gunmaker in London,” Bodie said absently, squinting down, “for centuries.” He was clutching his hands behind his back, as if afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop himself touching it. “Bespoke…”

“Every one an individual,” Alf nodded. “Not counting the war work, of course.”

“Of course.” Doyle nodded sagely. “The war work.”

Alf glared. “Alright - out with you…” he began, but Bodie was leaning even closer to the table, and when he looked up at Alf again he was smiling - one of his real smiles, Doyle thought, right to his eyes. Whatever this bloody gun was, he wasn’t sure he liked it. It was keeping them far too long from… other things that he wanted to do.

“Is that a mallard?”

_What_ …? Doyle knew guns. He wasn’t going to go soppy over some ancient model that hadn’t shot straight for years, but he _knew guns_ , and there was nothing on a gun that was called a mallard…

“Ah, you spotted that! You see the retrievers in the grass?”

“I thought that was scrollwork… ” Bodie twisted his head, hands still entwined behind him, bending even lower to the case. “What’s the reverse like?”

“Well… I suppose if you’ve got an interest, I could show you. Now, where are my gloves…?”

Doyle closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly through his nostrils. Stay calm, be patient… this couldn’t take that long, and then they’d be off. He had a plan, and he was going to stick to it.

“Here, pull up a chair,” Alf was suggesting. “Round this side, we’ll get the light from the window. Now then…”

Bollocks.

Doyle eyed the clump of grey metal chairs against the wall, glanced to where Bodie already had his head bent over the table with Alf, face lit up. Bollocks. _Bollocks_. He turned back to the chairs, sat down on the most sturdy looking, and pulled another around so that he could put his feet up, crossed his arms against his chest and closed his eyes again. Bloody Alf… But he could hear the enthusiasm in Bodie’s voice, and it was like his smile - rare and… and precious. Not something you could break, not when you were allowed to see it.

It had been a long week. He fell asleep to the murmur of voices, and he dreamed that Bodie was smiling down at him, that they were at home, cleaning their guns, and that Bodie was leaning close to him, gun oil in hand…

 

“Come on, Sleeping Beauty! You know, I’ve got things to do this weekend - you gonna lie there all night?”

Doyle started awake, caught between the anticipation of his dream and the solid sound of Bodie’s voice, and then the world was falling from beneath him in a scrape of metal and wood as Bodie pulled the chair from under his legs. His feet hit the floor hard, but his arms flung out either side of him, and he kept his balance. “You…” he began, voice still rough with sleep.

“Now then lads, it’s well-past seven - time I was locking up. Don’t you have homes to go to?” Alf was standing at the door, eminently respectable in his coat and hat, an umbrella in one hand. 

Bloody cheek, Doyle thought resentfully, glaring up at Bodie, who was still looking like a kid, all bright eyes and mischief, a smirk on his face. He’d been enjoying himself… That’s right, that bloody gun… and that had been two hours ago, then, and he had a crick in his neck from falling asleep on that bloody chair, and the clean sheets were going to go to waste _again_. He rubbed at his neck with a grimace, tried to stretch his back, but Bodie was tugging at his sleeve - bloody _kid_ \- and Alf was gesturing impatiently with a huge set of keys, and…

Bollocks.

He let Bodie pull him towards the door, managed a half-civil _G’night_ to Alf, who was probably going to have one, and tried to wake up enough to reorganise his plans. Okay, so Bodie would probably want to rush out to some date tonight, now that they’d wasted all this time cloistered in the armoury…

He’d enjoyed it though, Bodie had. Even as they strode through the security gate and nodded to the bloke on guard duty, Bodie’s smile came back to him, not just dreamed, but real. Whatever that bloody gun was, it could put a smile on Bodie’s face, and he couldn’t regret that, not really. There’d be other nights.

The night air, caught between mist and drizzle, smelled strangely fresh as they emerged from the corridors, and he took a deep breath, waking up most of the rest of the way. Christ but it had been a week and a half. Maybe it was a weekend to curl up with a good book anyway, save his efforts for when he had a bit more energy. They paused on the steps, and Doyle stretched again, looked around for the car. They’d left it somewhere…

“So, I was thinking,” Bodie said as they stood there, leaning in to him slightly, so that his voice buzzed low in Doyle’s ear. “We could get you into some leather.”

“You what?” Startled for the second time that night, he turned away from the car hunt, towards Bodie, found their faces far closer than he thought they’d be, and stilled, his breath caught.

“Well - you got me thinking, didn’t you - about Purdeys… gave me some ideas. _in the leather_ , you said…”

He could speak. He _could_ speak. “Didn’t think you’d even heard that. Too taken with your pop-gun.” He didn’t move though, and Bodie stayed close.

“Some of the best guns ever made, Purdeys. And you fell asleep on one!”

“I fell asleep listening to you two rattle on,” he corrected. “ _Mallards_?”

“Beautiful,” Bodie said, but he was staring disconcertingly at Doyle’s mouth when he said it. “Couldn’t wake you - you looked all peaceful and rumpled and sweet…”

“ _Rumpled_?” he growled, before his brain caught up with his mouth. “… _Sweet_?”

Bodie was shaking his head, amused, that smirk right there on his… 

It wasn’t though, was it. 

It wasn’t Bodie’s smirk, Bodie was smiling at him, like he’d smiled at the Purdey, right to his eyes, as though… as though Doyle was a precious thing. He lifted his gaze from Bodie’s lips to Bodie’s eyes, and felt the world alive around them both, drizzle and distant traffic and shouts, the sounds of London on a Friday night.

“So - what you got on this weekend, then?” he asked, and they stepped down onto the pavement, into the night.

 

_April 2015_


End file.
